life in Split, Croatia as seen through the eyes of ex-pat American who has lived overseas for the past 20 years

Posted by: viewfromtheriva | August 27, 2017

7th Annual Split Blues Festival Outdoors at Zvoncac!

The 7th Split Blues Festival wound up a three day gig last night with a quartet of groups featuring Be Ha Ve from Zagreb, Harpoon Blues Band and Trio Trabacool from Split and Raphael Wressnig and the Soul Gift Band playing past midnight.

The venue this year was the park at Zvoncac, just in front of the Jadran Hotel and the small marina at the end of the Western Promenade. The crowd was smaller than I thought it would be, around 2,500 for the Saturday show, but the energy was high and the music, well, what can you say about the Blues!

My love affair with this genre began in college when I managed The Cloud, a Boston blues band. Although we never landed a contract, we did open for Chuck Berry and gigged with some groups that went on to fame and fortune like the J. Geils Blues Band, whose original name, a reflection of the times, was The Hallucinations.

So it was a lot of fun to get back into it last night and even hear some memorable covers of songs like Sunshine of your love and Gimme Shelter. Let’s hope the Festival gets some decent sponsors so it can continue to bring in talent from around the globe in years to come.